Took the truck out today in a freezing drizzle to pick up salt for the drive. I let it warm up a good 10 minutes and got in and drove about two miles before I noticed sputttering. I hit the throttle a bit and it shuddered and shut off. Ok, restarted and took off again only to notice more sputtering and finally died on the side of the road. I tried to restart it and drained the battery in the process. I finally had a good soul stop and give me a jump after about 1.5 hours and thought that I was almost out of gas as the gauge on both tanks don't work. I made it to the gas station, left it running, and pumped only 4.5 gallons in the rear till it was full. I put 1.5 in the leaking front (leaks only when more than half full). I revved the motor at the gas station and it sounded good.

I drove straight home and left it running in the drive for another 10 minutes. It ran pretty well. I parked it, shut it off and restarted it and everything was fine. I decided to try and start an hour later and it would crank and crank and almost catch, but no start. I kept trying till the battery started to die and now I am in a quandary.

I checked some forums and didn't see anything that jumped out at me. I don't have a code reader and i don't have the funds to start swapping parts out. I need some help as to what the problem could be or where I should start. I poured some Stabil in the full rear tank, hoping I have water, but it did not magically work.

Any help would be much appreciated as we are going to be hit with a big storm and this is my plow truck.

 

When it won't start,

Did you verify it has steady spark?

Did you verify it has fuel pressure and it is up to spec? (you'd need a gauge for that, no other way to check)

 

you dont need a fancy code reader ... you can pull the codes using only a piece of wire. do a search here and it will come up, its really quite easy. this question is asked so often that someone probably has a how-to ready for you.

 

Take brake /carb clean ( NOT ETHER ) take air breather off. Open throttle body and spray directly in TB for 2 or 3 sec. Let go or close TB and crank it. Should start for moment if fuel pressure is an issue

 

Truck started fine and i was able to plow my drive for 20 mins or so before I noticed sputtering. After I had made a couple of long passes, I started to work the truck hard and revved her up. No problems, maybe a slight miss, but plenty of power. Snow was about 10" deep, but not too heavy. Ran it a bit more and almost died when i quickly gave it more than half throttle to test how bad the sputtering was. I let the truck sit a couple of hours and started it back up and plowed another 15 minutes before it just started to sputter.

I have not done done any diagnostics, as i need to find the link to testing for codes with the wire. I do not have a CEL. Distributor cap and wires "look" old. I am leaning towards changing the distributor cap and rotor, wires and maybe ignition module as the plugs were changed out 3 years ago when i replaced manifolds. I figure I'll take a look at it once the weather get a touch warmer.

Thanks for the input and if anything i babbled about makes sense, let me know.

 

Sounds like icm bolted to distributor. Check wiring first. It if it ran that long it's hard to figure its olny tune up parts. But don't get me wrong 3 yrs is a long time for tune up parts